


your name a kiss of snow

by venndaai



Category: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Diary/Journal, First Time, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Other, Telepathic Bond, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21952321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: “Therem,” Genly said to me, “you’re trembling.”I looked at my shaking hands. I was too tired to try and maintain shifgrethor. “I was afraid you might die.”“There’s a good chance I might yet,” Genly said, “we’ve got four hundred miles to go.”
Relationships: Genly Ai/Therem Harth rem ir Estraven
Comments: 32
Kudos: 117
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	your name a kiss of snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LJ_McKay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LJ_McKay/gifts).



Today I nearly lost Genly Ai, for the fourth time this year. I hope there will not be a fifth time. It is not an experience I enjoy repeating. And each time it is always my fault. Genly disagrees with me on this, but of the two of us I am the one who grew up in the shadow of the Ice- I am the one who should be able to spot a crevasse before I push my friend right into it. 

The crevasse was a wide one, and the sides had collapsed in somewhat, which is the only reason either of us are still alive. The sledge was ripped from my grasp, and as I slid down the icy slope I was able to watch in horror as Genly, strapped into the harness, was pulled downhill at a much higher speed, hitting the smooth ice floor of the crevasse with a terrible crack and then sliding to a stop. I screwed my eyes shut and tried to let my body go loose as I rolled down the slope, and when I hit the bottom I let my momentum push me upward, running towards the dark shape of the sledge and Genly’s unmoving body. An unfamiliar panic was rising in me, and frightened me more than anything else. I had thought myself trained out of panic. 

It seemed to take me an irrational amount of time to reach Genly. Again and again I heard in my head the sound of them hitting the ice. Around me there were only the tiny sounds of the snow we’d displaced settling down. I reached Genly at last. They were lying there, absolutely still, and of course I couldn’t tell from a glance if they were breathing or not, under all their clothes. For a horrible moment I was weak enough to wonder what I would do if Genly’s neck was broken and they were dead. I had perhaps enough food to get down off the ice, where I might extend my starvation a few weeks by catching game. It didn’t matter. I don’t know when it was in the last three years that I decided to devote whatever was left in me to Genly and their cause, but it’s done now, and losing my heart a second time would kill me faster than hunger.

But I peeled back Genly’s face mask and watched their small breaths crystallize in the freezing air, and suddenly I could breathe more easily myself.

But Genly didn’t open their eyes, or speak, or move any further than the inhalation and exhalation of air. I called their name and squeezed their shoulders, to no avail. At last I reached out, as tentatively as ever: _ Genry?  _

No response. No reply from my dead sibling out of the dark.

I set up the tent there in the crevasse. I was loathe to move my companion, but if they had any serious injuries we were done for anyways, so I dragged them in as gently as I could, sealing the tent and setting the stove to a higher heat than before. It was soon incredibly hot inside, but I think I hardly noticed. I stripped Genly down to their underwear, checking for injuries. I was entering kemmer, but I was so consumed by my fears that I did not feel the effects of that either. A large bump on the back of Genly’s head had swelled up, and their tight helmet of hair didn’t hide the blood that was unfreezing now in the heat. Also their left side was badly bruised. Apart from that they were whole. But still they did not wake, while I cleaned and treated the deep scrape on their scalp as best I could. It was the day after our escape from Pulefen Farm all over again, and I indulged in the same behavior as I had then, gathering Genly into my arms and weeping over them. Extremely foolish, when I knew perfectly well that for the first hour there would be no reason to assume they did not merely have a concussion. 

Which of course turned out to be the case. I think it was about twenty minutes after our fall when Genly moved in my arms. “Therem?” they murmured.

“Yes,” I said at once, but did not immediately release them. Instead I propped them up against the side of the tent, keeping my hands on their shoulders. 

“I’m cold,” they said, and I let go of them with one hand so I could turn up the heat even more. I would have to remove my own clothes soon, and it occurred to me for the first time that this might pose a problem, now that Genly was awake. 

“What happened?” they asked, and their light, golden eyes were unfocused.* 

“You fell and hit your head,” I explained. “You have a concussion.”

“Oh,” Genly said. “I’m cold.”

“I know,” I said, hoping I could be gentle and patient. They blinked at me, and I gave in: I pulled off my shirt and trousers, and lay down next to them, skin against skin. After a moment they lay down too, and leaned into me, heated somewhat, I hoped, by my presence. For my part, I was heated by our contact in a different way, but it was a slow heat, and I was able to simply lie there and let myself enjoy it without too much guilt. A memory stole over me, of sleepy mornings with Ashe, while the children were still abed. I didn’t want to think of Ashe, and I concentrated on slowing my breathing.

“I don’t remember,” Genly said, but calmly. A sign of their condition, maybe, but I think it was another example of their strange bravery. They have such difficulty with calm in the face of frustration or achievement, seemingly unable to temper their mercurial emotions, but the prospect of injury or death to themself leaves them apparently unfazed. Perhaps it was part of their training, which I think must be somewhat akin to what I underwent with the Handarratta. 

“It is all right,” I said. I started to say that the sledge was undamaged, but then realized I hadn’t bothered to check. At least the stove was working, and the tent seemed fine. “It was my fault.”

“You blame yourself too much,” Genly said, and their face held emotions in it that weren’t alien at all, and I had to look away. 

“Sleep,” I said.

“You’ll wake me every few hours?”

“Of course,” I said, and pushed my hands to my side to fight down the urge to press my fingers to their cheek as I would to reassure Ashe, or Arek, or a child.

Genly trusted me. They slept. 

I kept my promise, and woke them several times throughout the day. Each time they answered more coherently. Their bruised skin got more purple, but I think the swelling on their skull has gone down a bit. When Genly woke up an hour ago, they wanted to shave their hair off to get rid of the blood-soaked mats, but I don’t want to risk the cold on their head. We washed it as best we could. I am sure my hair looks worse.

“Therem,” Genly said to me, “you’re trembling.”

I looked at my shaking hands. I was too tired to try and maintain shifgrethor. “I was afraid you might die.”

“There’s a good chance I might yet,” Genly said, “we’ve got four hundred miles to go.” Then they blinked at me, and their eyes finally focused. “Therem,” they said, softly, “you’re in kemmer.”

“It isn’t that bad,” I lied. A small lie, but it’s the first I’ve told Genly, and I can’t stop thinking about that. 

“You’re shaking, you’re exhausted- stop fussing over me and rest.”

They were right, of course. 

I should be resting now, but I needed to write this down first. I’ll have to cross most of it out later, no doubt. But I’m tired of playing shifgrethor with my own record. I’m writing this and at the same time I’m watching them, dressed again now and burrowed into their sleeping bag, and I’m cataloguing every long eyelash, letting my gaze sweep over the curve of their chapped lips. I thought this would be better as the journey went on, as I became more starved and exhausted and Genly became more travelworn and therefore less attractive. It has not gotten better. 

Tomorrow Genly will want to get back in the harness. I will probably have to let them. We lost most of a day through my stupidity.

  
  
  
  
  


_ *Translator’s note: My eyes would not be considered light on Earth or Hain-Davenant. They would generally be called dark brown. On Winter, however, iris color is almost exclusively black, and mine is just different enough to be remarked upon if someone examines me very closely, as, I eventually discovered, Estraven often did. _

\---

I woke up, and immediately noticed that I was only pleasantly warm, and that the wind outside was quiet. I glanced at the stove. Genly had turned it down, the damn fool. I turned my head the other way, and saw them sitting up, cross-legged, shivering and staring blank-faced into the distance. 

I wondered why I had woken, and woken up so entirely, when usually the process was drawn-out and painful, and then I realized that I could feel Genly. I could feel them, not their physical body but something else, some essence of my friend and I felt their fear and grief and loneliness. 

“Genry,” I whispered. 

They were close enough to touch, and also very far away from me.

_ Please,  _ Arek said, in my mind, desperate, yearning. 

I could never refuse either of them anything. I touched the Envoy’s arm. They turned, and fell against my bare chest, squeezing me in the tight embrace of someone clinging to a boulder in a snowstorm.

_ They were dead, _ Arek told me, in the same haunting soft whisper they’d used when we were children and they’d told me of the person they’d seen swallowed up by icy water on a fishing trip. _ I was in the van again but this time they were all dead, and so was I. _

Genly’s touch burned me where their palms pressed against my back. As always they were hot as a furnace, and long and heavy in my arms. I could feel their breath, warm and wet and ragged.

“I’m sorry,” I said, uselessly, and then, with more strength, “Genry, you aren’t dead.” It was true. My sibling was dead, lost utterly to the ice. But Genly Ai seemed to me to be the most alive person in this world or any other.

I wish I knew how to banish Genly’s ghosts, but I can’t even get rid of my own.

“Therem,” Genly said, aloud, and for the first time since the fall, sounded entirely themself again. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.” I expected them to pull away from me, and managed to stop myself from sighing. But they did not pull entirely away, and remained facing me, our legs tangled together. They were still shaking. I reached out and took their hands in mine. I knew that was a risk, but I simply had to try and comfort them somehow. 

“Nusuth,” I said, and found myself rubbing circles against the bones of their wrist with my thumbs. 

“When I was a child,” Genly said to me, “I used to think that surely evil had to be endemic to my own world. That out in the stars, people lived free of it.” They shook their head. “But it’s everywhere, every world with people on it. What a terrible thing to know.”

“When you’ve spoken to me of the world where you trained,” I said, carefully, “you have always said it is a peaceful and just place.”

They gave me a weary look. “You thought me hopelessly naive, didn’t you, in Orgoreyn,” they said.

I looked back, not answering, until they laughed. “All right, so I was,” they admitted. “But not because I didn’t know of the terrible things that humans can do.”

I let go of their hands, and reached up, and curved my palm around the side of their face. An unmistakably intimate gesture, more daring than anything I’d done before. Genly leaned into my touch, and the wave of painful fondness that swept over me was more destabilizing than the wave of desire. 

“You shouldn’t be touching me,” Genly said, as though they’d only just remembered last month’s decision. Maybe they had only just remembered it. Maybe it wasn’t a topic they’d been turning over and over in their mind for weeks. 

I pulled back as if burned. Genly looked afraid. “Therem,” they said, plaintive and unsure, “when I said I thought it would be for the best- it isn’t that I’m not flattered- that I’m not attracted to you- that I wouldn’t appreciate-”

Maybe they were afraid for the exact same reasons I was. A feeling of doom was settling on me. I hated it. Genly deserved only joy. They had been happy, out here on the ice, I could tell from the sound of their voice talking at night in the tent, carefree as I never heard it in Karhide. And me, lying next to them, confused and afraid and unable to find my own shadow- but I think I am happier too. Out here I am completely away from every person I dislike, and there is only Genly, who I- who trusts me now, at least as much as they can trust any human of Earth. It’s not everything I wanted but it’s so much more than nothing and it’s joyous and also so painful-

“I want to touch you,” I said. “But only if you want it.”

They did not answer with words, but with a kiss. Gentle, but it was enough to make me desperate, and I deepened the kiss, made it rough and hard and full of longing.

When we stopped to breathe we did not break apart, but leaned against each other, forehead pressing against forehead. The sound of Genly’s breathing was loud in my ears. Their mouth had tasted awful, but I’m sure mine wasn’t any better. We were both filthy and stinking and starved, and I never wanted to leave this moment.

I have been attracted to several people since I left Ashe; a person can’t be in kemmer and not notice which people are more appealing, no matter how much they meditate. But I never truly wanted to be with anyone else. As I wrote yesterday I don’t know just when that changed. 

“This… this might be a mistake,” Genly said, once they had caught their breath. “I’m…I’m very afraid of losing our friendship.”

I’m sure they wouldn’t understand how such a statement implied a complete waving of shifgrethor, and as such came off as very intimate. Regardless, it was a brave thing to say, and it allowed me to confess in kind that I was also anxious about it. Then I said, “The decision is up to you.”

“You should know I haven’t….” A hesitation, a struggle over words: I’ve come to recognize this as a sign that Genly is fighting their alien version of shifgrethor. “I haven’t had sexual intercourse before, with anyone.”

This was strange to me, as Genly had no doubt anticipated. Most children in Karhide enter the kemmerhouse in either their first or second kemmer, around age fourteen or fifteen. I’ve never heard of anyone who didn’t at least by the time they were twenty. Genly and I did the math once in Ehrenrang, and decided that they were approximately twenty-six in Earth years, only a year off from the Terran number. Some eleven years younger than myself. I had never had sex with anyone who did not have some experience, since I was the youngest in my age bracket at the Fastness of Estre.

Genly leaned away slightly, and looked at me with embarrassment and anxiety in their eyes, and I realized I had to say something to reassure them. “I’m sure I have enough experience for both of us,” I said. “If that is what you want.” 

“I do want it,” Genly said, and looked surprised to hear their own words; then repeated them, louder. “I do want it.” They took my hands, and said, “I want you.”

Those words, from that person! I had not dared to imagine this even in my dreams. But if this is what I want, then why did I feel such terror? Why do I still feel it? I suppose there are several obvious answers to that. 

“If you’d show me what to do,” Genly said, “I- I’d appreciate that.”

How much more frightened they must have been. I am trying to imagine it: coming alone to an alien world, crossing unimaginable distances of space and time, to end up in a tiny tent surrounded by hundreds of miles of inhospitable ice, and then offering to make oneself even more vulnerable, completely at the mercy of someone they might never fully understand. I have had the thought before that Genly’s bravery is one of their most admirable qualities.

“I suppose it is good that my body is this way this time then. It will be more familiar to you.” 

“Well,” Genly said, “yes and no.” Their grip on my hands tightened. “It’s- very complicated, and probably not something I’d have any success explaining. It may cause me some- hesitation, which I beg you not to interpret as rejection or revulsion.”

I hesitated myself at that, remembering my embarrassment and fear the last time I’d been in kemmer. Could I trust myself not to react badly at any potential sign of disgust from my alien friend? Surely I could, for Genly’s sake. “All right,” I said. 

They took a few deep breaths, and then let go of my hands. I leaned forward, feeling my heart pounding in my chest, and the alien in my tent brushed their fingers along my jaw and then kissed me again. They were unpracticed but confident enough at this part of it, at least. I hoped they knew that my biology would not allow me to take my time with foreplay. Their kisses were driving me mad. If I didn’t get more contact I would be overwhelmed and rendered useless by my own hormones. 

It was all right. “Show me,” Genly said, moving my hand to lie over their hand, and I complied. 

Even as I write this, I’m not sure why I am driven to describe it. It won’t be copied into my record for my child, that’s for certain. Even if I thought such a personal anecdote would have any value for them, it would be a betrayal of Genly’s trust to share such an intimate moment. I suppose it simply has to do with the fear that grips me sometimes, that the most important moments of my life may be lost to the storm, that by writing them down I can fix them in place. Human memory is fallible. I no longer remember the sound of Arek’s laugh, the color of the rug in our room in Estre. 

It was a unique experience, what happened last night. I met the Alien, and I saw in their eyes the same fear and passion and awe that I felt in myself. Mechanically, it was very ordinary, except for the constraint of our claustrophobic surroundings. Emotionally, it was unlike anything else. There was a duality to everything. I was aware, simultaneously, of being incredibly aware of the close proximity of another human being, and of our extreme isolation, and I felt the loneliness of that isolation and at the same time fancied that the Ice itself was observing us. Through our actions we were shouting to the Gobrin, _We are here, we are human, and we are alive._

I felt drunk. I felt like the stars were in the tent with us. 

It was ordinary sex, and it wasn’t.

Maybe it only seemed that way because it has been so long since the last time I met with someone in that fashion. 

Sleep now. I am too tired to write more. Genly, curled against my side, is snoring.


End file.
